[DigitalToday reporter Jae-won Choi] About 1 in every 46 babies born in Taiwan last year was a child of a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co employee family. Analysts say high wages and childbirth and childcare benefits help reduce the burden of having children in an era of low birth rates.

Japanese media outlet Gigazine, citing TSMC’s 2025 sustainability report released last month, reported that 2,331 newborns were born last year to families of employees at TSMC’s Taiwan operations and affiliate VisEra. That equals about 2.2 percent of Taiwan’s 107,812 births. It works out to about 1 in 46 newborns.

TSMC runs childbirth and childcare support programmes. Last year, 7,213 employees at its Taiwan operations and VisEra were eligible for unpaid childcare leave, or 9 percent of the total, and 509 actually applied for leave. Of 577 employees scheduled to return, 510 came back as scheduled or earlier, for a return rate of 88.4 percent. Of 572 employees who returned to work in 2024, 523 remained employed through the end of last year, for a retention rate of 91.4 percent.

Still, it is difficult to compare TSMC’s share of births with Taiwan’s overall population in simple terms. More than 80 percent of its employees are aged 18 to 50, meaning the share of people of childbearing age is higher than in the overall population.

Shen Cheng-nan (선정난), a Taiwanese physician and columnist, estimated that, taking age and gender into account, birth rates among TSMC employees are about double Taiwan’s overall level. He added that while the company’s welfare system may have had an impact, high income levels are also an important factor. It is an assessment that TSMC’s case again shows the relationship between low birth rates and the burden of income and housing costs.